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Why Your Boss is a Sociopath - Gervais Principle Explained

4,566 views Wait, is this logic right? • Jan 19, 2024
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Slog Reference: Gervais principle

Description

The Gervais principle states that most offices and corporations contain primarily three types of people, losers, clueless, and sociopaths. Sounds interesting, find out how the principal reasons for the hierarchy of these people and why it matters to you. While doing that, you'll understand the basics of corporations or corporate structure to choose your role or avoid being a loser, clueless, or sociopath.

Books mentioned in the video:
The Gervais principle: https://tapthe.link/GervaisPrincipleBookD
Give and take: https://tapthe.link/GiveandTakeBookD
The Peter principle: https://tapthe.link/PeterPrincipleBookD
The Dilbert principle: https://tapthe.link/DilbertPrincipleBookD

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS
Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
01:30 The Gervais principle
03:42 The secret
05:40 Losers
08:37 The office characters
09:20 Real-life examples
10:37 The nuance
13:29 The Peter principle

#futureiq #theoffice

Related Slog Matches

Gervais principle

Date Proximity

62.00

Transcript

so Shri Kant huh are you a loser clueless or a sociopath if those are my only three options of course because the entire world huh right consists of losers reporting to clueless managers and clueless managers reporting to sociopaths okay so this is actually so uh this is actually a famous cartoon by gaping void which says that the company hierarchy is losers reporting to cluess reporting to sociopaths and wenat gurur uh wrote a book on this called the Jes principle expanding on this idea and it is fascinating right it's a very cynical look at is this J any relation to Ricky Jer yes this is explanation of how the corporate work World Works according to the office okay the series the
series this episode is based on wut's the J principal which is using examples from the US version of the office to explain how messed up corporate life is how messed up is this name he's using the US version and naming it out of the UK version what man Wen katesh not fair but it's naming it after Ricky Jes the creator of uh but the basic idea is that in any company or for that matter in a politic party in a country in the world any organization any organization the people at the top are sociopaths okay they just care about themselves they have some hidden agenda which they don't tell you about and they're focused on that right all their
public pronouncements are mostly lies meant to mislead you meant to convince the Believers that this is some higher purpose the problem is that in the middle there is a large number of people who believe this [ __ ] these are the clueless people they are being used by the sociopaths to further their agenda okay okay now there are some people who see what is going on right who can see that this is [ __ ] and that this person doesn't really believe in it they can look back at the history a little bit bit right these people are the losers because they know what is going on but they can do nothing about it losers in the chat
represent okay so this is the hierarchy of a company at the bottom there are the losers who are doing the actual work yeah they report to managers who are clueless and who believe in this company vision and you know um random stuff like don't be evil or whatever right right and the sociopaths who came up with those nice sounding stories but in reality they're doing something behind the scenes something else right I'm pretty sure that everybody in the uh chat right now everybody on the other side of the screen is laughing their guts out at this moment but I I agree I have had the same experience the people at the top sociopaths and this is
by the way a verified study I believe that most leaders or most successful leaders for that matter are sociopaths they are truly sociopaths and they do things only to satisfy a certain specific uh narcissistic agenda but I mean I I think that's going a little too far it's an exaggeration but what I would say it's a lived experience what I would say is that most leaders do not publicly talk about their real plans right the real strategy is something that is worked out behind the scenes but those are company Secrets na they can never be revealed correct not even to the managers in the company who are supposed to be executing that strategy right they clueless exactly so
that's the point right so take an example of Google right uh I remember when uh in the early days when Google had this motto of don't be evil and Microsoft was of course the evil empire at that time and we were all so happy that finally somebody has come who can fight Microsoft and they have a stated policy of being good throughout right until they didn't I mean it was like it took a little while for us to realize that this don't be evil was just something they were saying because uh as soon as they became big enough they started doing evil things and very quietly removed don't be evil from their websites and from their company
documents and so on this actually happened and they actually had don't be evil on their websites they actually had don't be evil written on their websites they made it like a huge marketing push Google believes in the philosophy of don't be evil and then suddenly one day that line disappeared from all of their content from all of their website and that's that's why I have huge distrust with Google about Google well that's just not just Google right pretty much any company that's how uh it works right the goody goody public pronouncements are there just as goody goody pronouncement to keep the clueless people and and the losers uh in their place yeah well losers you don't have to
worry too much about right because I mean see there are three categories of losers okay I mean when you are fresh right you don't know anything about what is uh going on so you're the wide-eyed loser we are a wide-eyed loser right now uh what happens is is that you first listen to the whatever the vision and the goody goody promises uh in the beginning you are excused if you believe it right now the thing is I mean do you go out of your way and like really work hard towards that right when you are working extra hard and of course at that stage your remuneration whatever you get is not going to be really you know that
high correct right correct so when you're if you're overachieving as a loser huh right usually the sociopaths will promote you because you have all the potential to become a clueless manager right the whole point is that if you're too stupid to see that putting in effort at this stage is a waste of time uh especially into like something that they just made up and is not the real strategy right then you are a clueless person who is gullible and can be used manipulated right you get promoted to Second category of loser are those who quickly realize that this is all [ __ ] right and then what they do is that they say you know what there is no
point in me putting so much effort so they will put in the minimum amount of effort needed to not get fired right so those are the loser losers they are the ones who are just going to be there they are the ones who are going to do all their real work because they're not getting promoted to managers and Al because they are not sociopathic enough to become leaders there is a category of losers who see what is going on and then they say you know what I want to be with the big boys and then you start the little game of manipulation you are an underachiever but using all that free time to see ways
in which you can get into interesting positions right that just sounds like a sociopath in the making exactly the sociopaths will groom such people to take over from them when they are ready to jump ship to a better opportunity so they can leave it in the hands of the new sociopath man this video just it it is it eviscerated my entire career to this point right I mean when I first uh read about this yeah since then it has changed how I view the world right losers produce sociopaths strategize and the clueless are the buffer in between which uh are there to protect the sociopaths from any blowback in case things go wrong yeah now that
I've said that I can actually start seeing characters of the office in that in that light sociopaths clueless and losers uh but do you want to name names here yeah of course Jim is clearly a loser Michael Scott thinks he's a sociopath but he is clueless and the Dunder mlin Executives right at the head office they are clearly sociopaths and in fact if you are a fan of the office you should definitely definitely go and read uh wenat the J principal lots of examples but we will not cover them in this episode because uh those are spoilers and some of you might not want see the series right but why don't I take some real life examples right that
is exactly what I was about to ask you I mean in political parties there are so many lovely examples right so for example what about a congress politician who's daily making fiery speeches about secularism and minorities and then one F day suddenly joins the BJP right uh straight for the jugular again what about a politician who's going on and on and on about how you know all teaching should be in marati medium and whose own children are in international board English schools right do you know know that Republican Congressman in the uh us most of them publicly refuse to share whether they are vaccinated or not because you know they need to convince the clueless that vaccines are bad
because that's the position of uh a chunk of that party but in reality they know that they want vaccines and same goes for masks as well and all of the other I mean the point once you understand this there is no shortage of examples you will just start seeing them that's what I meant when I said that it changed my life yeah um what what other uh uh I Remember by the way there is a book called give and take Adam Grant is the author he speaks about something similar but slightly different terms he calls people givers and takers so he says that the people at the top typically end up being takers and uh the
people at the bottom typically end up being givers but it's not that there are all the givers endend up being at the bottom there are some really good givers also who end up reaching the top so essentially what that means in this particular context is that uh not everybody at the top has to be a sociopath there are some really good losers also who end up being at the top right because this what you've just said doesn't give losers any hope yeah I should point out that you know really what I believe is that there are good people everywhere and ism is for comments right the only reason for doing this episode is that I was too far in
this direction and that's why I'm talking about the completely other end the cynical end of it so that my worldview has shifted somewhere in the middle right I call this my pendulum uh principle we have to talk about the pendulum principle in another episode because we haven't spoken about that yet and if by the time you're watching this hearing this we've spoken about it you'll find a link in the description so notes usually uh when I say something right it's not necessary that it is 100% true right the truth is always somewhere in the middle but the reason I'm saying this is because you are probably too far at the other end and this will pull you
in this direction so the other end being people who completely are gullible about their uh sociopaths managers intentions and eat up everything that they have to tell them right yeah so it's not uh good idea to be completely cynical all the time there are some good people who really believe what they say and say what they believe but keep in mind that a large chunk of people at the top are really sociopaths and that they have hidden agendas that you don't know about and uh yeah also go check out the book give and take by Adam Grant because uh there are some examples of how you can identify the sociopaths not exactly that but something similar to that so one
extreme is that people believe that all of the top level head honchos brass are sociopaths the other level is people believe that no they have the best interest of company at heart and the truth is somewhere in between and I mean the point of this episode is that you should know that both possibilities exist and you should make an effort to try to understand uh which is which right yeah we're not saying don't trust your managers we are not saying trust your manager we are saying evaluate correct um and while we are talking about the orc chart of the world there are a couple of other orc charts of the world which are also very interesting
right okay so uh have you heard of the Peter principal no it's a book uh written by a person called Peter this Peter guy a sociopath naming the book after himself and the principal after himself so in any big organization think of what happens right each person if they do a good job at this level they get promoted to the next level correct if they do a good job there they get promoted next huh if they do a bad job here what happens they stay there they stay there every person Rises to his level of incompetence right so in steady state everybody is doing a job that they are incompetent at that's the Peter Principle right uh Scott read that
it's interesting and it's like a you know serious academic work uh on the other side is Scott Adams creator of Dilbert comics he's written a book called the Dilbert principal where he says that in fact it is worse that somebody who is incompetent gets promoted further up to get them out of the way of the people who need to do the real work so just putting those two together does not paint a very Rosy picture of the world right now for me but it's a good idea to read all of this and then create your own world view as a synthesis of all of those and if you know why I sang that go check out the other video in which this
song is very important this song is where this video begins actually but yeah man what what a fascinating uh pyramid okay losers clueless sociopaths yeah this was an extra cynical episode I promise there will be some you know uh optimistic and nice episodes also in the future keep watching shrikant naen this is cynical future IQ thank you thank you for watching till the end if you like this episode check out these others you might like them also and please share with your friends I'm sure they will also like these thank you